About Me

Hi! I'm Eunice and I live in Bolton, Lancashire, with my two dogs Sophie and Sugar and an assortment of cats - well it used to be Sophie and Sugar, now it's Sophie and Poppie. I first began camping back in 1997 when my then partner took me to Anglesey for my birthday weekend. We slept in the back of the car - a hatchback - using the cushions off the settee at home as a mattress, and cooked and brewed up on a single burner camping stove. The site was good, the views were great, the weather fantastic and I was completely hooked. Following that weekend we got a two-man tent and some proper accessories and returned to Anglesey two weeks later, then over time we progressed to a three-man tent followed by an old trailer tent, then a new trailer tent, a campervan and finally a caravan. When my partner decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the street - literally - in April 2009 and I suddenly found myself alone after fifteen years, I decided there was no way I was going to give up camping and caravanning if I could cope on my own. This blog is the story of my travels, trials and tribulations since becoming a solo camper - I hope you like it

Over the six Christmases that I've lived on my own my daughter-in-law has, each year, made up a 'hamper' out of a cardboard box covered in fancy paper and containing various items of food and drink for me and treats and toys for the pets. This is usually brought over by my son a couple of days before Christmas so I will have something to open on Christmas morning before I get my other presents at their house later in the day; this time though he arrived with two boxes, the larger of them being heavier than the other.Now if there's one job I absolutely hate it's wrapping Christmas presents so I tend to leave it until the last minute, usually Christmas Eve. For once though, to avoid working between Christmas and New Year I did everything I needed to do on Christmas Eve day, and by the time I'd finally finished and got home I was in no mood for wrapping presents for my son and his family so I left it until the following morning. It took ages, and with everything else I had to do round here I didn't get to opening the two boxes my son had brought for me until I was almost ready for going over to his place for Christmas dinner, and I did it in a hurry - and that's when my brain went awol. The smaller of the boxes did, as usual, provide me with lots of goodies in the way of food, but when I tore the wrapping partially off the larger box I saw that it was an Asda bagless vacuum cleaner. Now as I already have two perfectly good vacuum cleaners, which my son very well knows, it struck me as being a rather unusual present and I hadn't a clue what I would do with something I didn't need, but thinking I may be able to take it to my local Asda store at a later date and exchange it for something I did need I didn't actually open the box.Over at my son's later on, and before any presents were exchanged, I managed to get him on his own and ask him whose idea it was to get me the vacuum cleaner - to which he promptly replied that it was only a vacuum cleaner box, and if I'd opened it properly I would find it contained all sorts of food and goodies for the dogs and cats. Thank goodness I spoke to him first or I would have been thanking my daughter-in-law for a non existent vacuum cleaner and she would have been thinking I'd lost the plot - and she would have also realised that I hadn't actually opened the box. Now that could have been embarrassing!